Carl Off’s masterpiece ‘Carmina Burana,’--Tom Brady: "the song they play when the team is in the stadium in the tunnel"

photo courtesy of: www.amazon.ca/.../offer-listing/-/B00001P4RG/all


Track #15 on the Tom Brady iTunes Athlete nikeplus.com Inspirations Playlist is the first movement of the composer Carl Off’s masterpiece ‘Carmina Burana,’ called “O Fortuna.”
What do I mean by masterpiece? Well, I listen to Carmina Burana quite often at my home studio and love playing it for guests. Typical reply: “OH!!! This is that music from the movie ‘The Omen’ or ‘The Exorcist’! " (though it is not, some of the same haunted sounds are familiar). Truly, when you hear a sample of what might sound like an obscure piece of music you may say to yourself: “AH! That is where that music comes from!” The piece is in operatic mode, and is a classic in the mode of what Casablanca or Godfather II is to movies, or what Ali is to boxing or what ’60 Minutes’ is to television: a classic so perfect that one thinks: this had to be.

Carmina Burana has been recorded 1000s of times and the tempo for each section of any version, including this one by the London Symphony Orchestra & Richard Hickox is controlled by the conductor with speeds so variable as not to have one meanspeed–especially for O Fortuna, where the speeds/tempi literally cross the spectrum of audible music from 40 beats per minute past 300 beats per minute.

To me, if you’ve missed this one, it is like being a rock and roll fan and saying you never heard of “Jumping Jack Flash” by the Rolling Stones—almost beyond music, Carmina Burana is a wildly original, awesomely powerful piece of classical music written in the early 20th century. A comparison again: Mussorsky’s ‘Pictures At An Exhibition’: too original to be classified, a rare MUST.

It, the, is no surprise, then, when Tom Brady says this about this section of the piece:
“This is the song they play when the team is in the stadium in the tunnel waiting to be introduced. It gets the whole place on their feet.”

We at the Meanspeed Trust are not in the habit of actively recommending pieces of music where the message is, candidly: hey, check this out, or you will be missing out on one of the finest pieces of art ever created.

This link may help.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orff.

Ian Schneider
November 19, 2006
NYC